


Blackberry, Blackberry, Blackberry

by Emeraldwoman



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: ADD/ADHD Poe Dameron, Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, F/M, Horny Teenagers, M/M, Multi, No one has the Force (OR DO THEY), Not a Euphemism, POV Poe Dameron, Poe Dameron Has So Many Opinions, Poe eats a raw potato, Trans Jannah, Warning: This fic features the Alt-Right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28237857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldwoman/pseuds/Emeraldwoman
Summary: Poe was planning the best senior year ever with his boyfriend Finn and Finn's girlfriend Rose, but Rey spent the summer being amazing and talking Ben Solo out of fascism and now Poe has to look at his stupid superhuman face at lunch EVERY DAY and Mayor Snoke is running for re-election and Leia Organa is their only hope for a non-fascist mayor, and Armitage Hux is in Poe's English class which is UNBEARABLE and Ben Solo has a PILOT's license and TOO MANY muscles.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 13
Kudos: 21
Collections: Ijustfellintothissendhelp





	1. Chapter 1

Poe’s first question was, why couldn’t Rey have fallen in love with  _ Rose _ over the summer?

It would have been amazing! For the first year since middle school, Finn didn’t have to go to military camp all summer to make his grandpa happy, and Poe’s job at the arcade was the first summer job that hadn’t shriveled his brain with boredom. What was  _ more _ , Poe and Finn had finally, with a certain amount of necessary drama, realised that they were mutually and messily into each other in a  _ romantic _ way halfway through junior year, and by the summer, they were firmly into ideal couplehood. Eros  _ and _ agape  _ and _ philia!

So if Rey and Rose had got together, the four of them could have double-queer-dated all over Coruscant County and pissed off homophobes and provided a beautiful example for the (younger) youth of today still stuck in their closets!

Instead,  _ Finn _ had fallen in love with Rose, and now Poe was part of an ethical polyamorous thruple, which he had to admit did  _ not _ suck, except for the bits that sucked in an incredibly great way, and by that he meant his own mouth. 

Poe was  _ so good _ at going down.

Okay, so, maybe that was the wrong question. Maybe the right question was, why had Rey fallen in love with fucking Ben Solo, who had spent junior year hanging out with those First Order assholes and posting fascist memes everywhere,  _ and, _ Poe was pretty sure, had been one of those black-masked morons who’d defaced all of his  _ individually crafted _ Pride Week posters.

Finn thought Poe’s habit of taunting alt-right groupies online when he was bored was a waste of energy, and Rose just pre-emptively blocked them, but at least Poe didn’t _engage_. _Poe_ hadn’t spent the entire summer _debating_ _the issues_ with the black-clad freaking _mascot_ for the Mayor Snoke fanclub, only to triumphantly emerge with a new boyfriend who was permanently attached to his _face_.

Of course it wasn’t actually Rey’s fault, because she was a perfect being. Poe had fallen deeply and platonically in love with Rey forever on the first day of high school, while he was slumped into his chair in English, waiting for the roll to be read out. At that point, he’d still been going by Ed, and he wasn’t looking forward to telling every teacher in every class what to call him, but you had to nip that shit in the bud before they got the wrong name stuck in their one-track elderly brains.

Ms Holdo had read, “Edgar Dameron.”

“Present! And it’s Ed.”

Ms Holdo marked the roll, and scribbled something by his name, and beside him, the tiny girl in the dirty grey sweater leaned over and said, “Edgar? Like Poe?”

“Poe?” Ed said. Something was lighting up in his heart.

“Yeah, Edgar Allen Poe? The writer?”

“I don’t know who that is,” Ed said earnestly. “Please tell me everything about him right now.”

“Mr Dameron,” Ms Holdo said. 

“Yup, one second,” Ed said and turned to the tiny girl.

She blinked at him, and said, “Well, he was kind of a gross dude, but he wrote some cool short stories, like one about a guy who hears the heart of the man he’s murdered beating through the walls of his house--”

“Badass,” Ed said. 

“Poe’s literature will come up in our syllabus,” Ms Holdo said. “Which I am going to go through now.” There was an obedient rustle as everyone turned to the first page. “We’ll be starting with some investigation of what makes American Literature American. Then we’ll--”

“Is this Raven thing cool?” Ed asked the tiny girl. “I mean, ravens are smart, I actually know a lot about corvids because--”

“Mr Dameron!” Ms Holdo said, and rubbed the space between her eyes. “I realise I haven’t gone over class expectations yet, but in this room, we do not speak over each other. We respect the voices of our classmates  _ and teachers _ . Is that clear?”

“Okay, but you interrupted me just then,” Ed pointed out, and that was how he was awarded the grand distinction of Ms Holdo’s first detention for the year, and also found the absolute best nickname in all of time and space. Poe was  _ sharp _ . It had  _ flair. _ It was  _ allusive _ .

It turned out that Rey had already met and charmed Finn in homeroom. It also turned out that she had been basically abandoned by her shitty parents and she’d spent most of her childhood dumped at the library one town over. Because her brain was an enormous, beautiful sponge, she’d read  _ and remembered _ almost everything on the stacks. Rey was a very poor, very brilliant mostly-orphan, who wore thrift store clothes and walked to school and drove Armitage-Look-At-My-Beemer-And-My-Princeton-Educated-SAT-Tutors-Hux completely fucking crazy because he could never, ever beat her.

Rey was  _ so _ smart and determined and argumentative that she had argued a thick brickhouse proto-fascist right out of his jackboots.

Okay, so maybe he could see why Rey had fallen for Ben Solo, because he was, objectively speaking, if you could stop thinking about him lurking behind Hux like an armoured attack dog, stupidly hot in a weird way where he had three times more face than any human should rightly have and also six times as much torso. Rey was a genius, but she was allowed to be shallow. She was allowed to get her freak on with a freaky dude.

Especially and  _ only _ because said freak was no longer a  _ Nazi  _ freak, which Rey insisted was Ben’s own hard-won redemption, but Poe suspected was because she was a particularly small and stubborn angel and Ben had finally realised that he couldn’t goosestep into her pure heart. 

Poe would be the first to say that you couldn't judge everyone for dumb shit they’d done in their past. Except Hux. He would always judge Hux. Poe was practically a prison abolitionist, but he was fairly certain that Hux should go to  _ jail _ , right now and forever, and then die, and then go to hell.

“So, this is Ben,” Rey said, and sat down at their booth.

“Yeah, we’ve met,” Finn said. He was holding Rose’s hand under the table, and Poe’s hand was on his knee, and Poe could feel Finn’s leg jiggling up and down. Finn didn’t have a perfect past either, but he’d got smart a lot sooner than Ben had,  _ and _ he’d had his epiphany even before he’d pulled Poe out of that trash can.

“I’m sorry I acted the way I did,” Ben said, hovering at the end of the table without sitting down. He sounded the way he always did, which was  _ intense _ . Poe was used to him intensely following a line of debate down the twisted pathways of what-about-ism, but he had to admit that the apology sounded genuine.

“And?” Rey said.

“And I don’t believe then what I do now. But I understand if you don’t want me to be here or hang out with you, because I was…” he hesitated

“... an asshole,” Rose suggested..

“A racist asshole,” Finn put in.

“A racist, classist, homophobic asshole,” Poe said firmly, and was more than a little surprised when Ben nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds right. And I don’t… I’m sorry. I don’t know how to put it right. I don’t know if I can. I get it if you want me to leave.” Ben scrunched up every muscle in his supersized bizarro face and somehow dropped his voice even lower into a new degree of intensity. “But  _ don’t _ take it out on Rey.”

“Oh my God,” Poe said. “He’s imprinted on you.”

“I’m not a mother duck!” Rey protested.

“You are a stern mother duck, and he is your fluffy little duckling. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” Poe pulled his feet off the booth seat opposite him, and gestured Ben generously into the space. “Sit. I don’t like you, and I may never forgive you, but you may join the worshippers at the Church of Rey.”

“You’re abominable,” Rey seethed.

“I thought the best thing that ever happened to you was that time you prank-called Hux and he actually thought you were a representative of the Republican party recruiting him to run for Congress and he got halfway through his stump speech before he realised we were laughing at him,” Rose said.

“ _ Yes _ ,” Poe said, in delighted memory. “ _ That  _ was the best thing. This is a very close second.”

Ben maneuvered his outsized body into the seat and looked cautiously at Rey. She smiled at him and ruffled his hair.

“Armitage has notes for his Presidential nomination speech acceptance,” Ben said, sort of to Poe, and sort of to the air. “He stands in front of his bathroom mirror and practises saying ‘God bless America’ with twelve different intonations.”

“ _ New best thing _ ,” Poe said. “Senior year is going to be  _ amazing _ .”

Ben smiled. Ben! Solo! Smiled! It was bizarre, because usually he looked feral, or vaguely pained, but when he smiled all of that face moved and his eyes lit up and for the tiniest moment, he was fun to be around.

And then he ruined everything. “I hope so, Edgar,” Ben said.

Finn winced. Rose sucked in a breath. Poe leaned forward, elbows on the table, shoulders back, and eyeballed him. “Okay,” he said. “My first question is, why don’t you ever call anyone by their fucking  _ name _ ?”

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Ignoring the fascism thing, which was, again, a massive thing to ignore, there were basically only two things wrong with Ben Solo.

The first, which had been a thing since like, _third grade_ , was that he never, ever used nicknames. He called Hux _Armitage_ and Poe _Edgar_ , and always had. Even before Rey had blessed his life with her radiant presence and excellent nicknaming skills, Poe had put up with Edgar instead of Ed, which hadn’t been so terrible when it was a weird tic from the weird kid, but had been _intensely infuriating_ during Ben’s period of just-asking-questions.

He’d called Finn _Finathan_. _No one_ called Finn Finathan. _Teachers_ didn’t call him Finathan in roll call at the start of the year, because Finn had talked to the wrinkled lady with huge glasses in the admissions office before freshman year even started, and she’d done something with the computers and now as far as the school was concerned, Finn was Finn. Poe hadn’t expected people who looked like Ms Kanata to be all-powerful hackers, which was definitely ageist of him.

“I really hate that name,” Finn said. He was pressing into the back of the booth seat like he could bust through it with his admittedly excellent shoulders. 

“I-” Ben stopped, and scrunched up his face. “I won’t call you… that name any more, then.” He looked at Rose.

“Just Rose,” she told him firmly. Rose had a Vietnamese name and an English one, and she had forbidden all of them from telling Ben her Vietnamese name. Poe’s boyfriend’s girlfriend was no fool.

Ben nodded, and looked at Poe. “And Edgar,” he said, straight-faced.

“What? No.”

Ben leaned back and crossed his stupendous arms over his ridiculous chest.

“Look,” Poe said. “I will allow you Armitage, because that’s _hilarious_. But my nickname has been Poe since freshman year. Your girlfriend--” he managed to say this without even gagging “-- gave me that nickname.”

“I don’t do nicknames,” Ben said flatly. 

“Well, fine, _Benjamin_.”

“My full name is Ben. Want to see my license?” There was something in his face. Was he smirking? The motherfucker was smirking. Wait, Ben couldn’t be a motherfucker, because Leia Organa was the coolest person in the world (next to Rey), and the only hope of unseating Mayor Snoke this election. Poe was going to have to wash his brain out for even thinking that.

“You’re not a motherfucker,” Poe’s mouth said, and Finn choked on his blueberry milkshake. He sprayed most of it over the table in the ensuing coughing fit, and Poe had to take him to the bathroom to clean up and make out. 

By the time they got back the conversation had gone away from nicknames and they were talking about planes. Ben’s license was a _pilot’s_ license. Ben’s dad was a pilot, and Ben had (completely illegally) been learning how to fly since he was tall enough to reach the controls, which had probably been when he was _three months old_. Poe was so envious he could have killed Ben for that alone.

“I’d love to learn to fly,” Rey said wistfully.

“I’ll take you up in the weekend,” Ben said, in that intensely sincere way, and Poe put the murder plans on hold.

Despite early indications of greatness, the first day of school boded poorly. Rose was in Poe’s homeroom (good), but he had Ms Holdo for English again (bad), and when he walked into her class, already bracing himself, he discovered that Hux was there too, sitting in the front row and smirking at him.

“Oh, gross,” Poe said.

“Pick a seat, Mr Dameron,” Ms Holdo told him, and Poe briefly contemplated the pranking possibilities inherent in sitting directly behind Hux, but opted instead for a place in a middle row, beside a window. A view of the parking lot was much better than a view of Hux’s oiled hair.

Other students drifted in and found seats. One of them was Gwen Phasma, who had tortured Finn at his horrible military summer camps for literal years. She scowled at Poe, and then slid into the desk behind Hux. Poe had already known none of his friends were going to be there, but it was not okay that he had to suffer the presence of Ms Holdo _and_ Armitage Hux _and_ Gwen Phasma all in one room, for 45 minutes, five times a week with no moral support.

“That’s three hours and 45 minutes, out of the 168 hours every week,” Finn said at lunch. “That’s only about two percent of your week.”

“If you love math so much, why don’t you marry it?” Poe demanded.

“It’s actually just over two percent,” Rose said. “2.2 something. But if we count _waking_ hours, the proportion would be correspondingly higher.”

“Why is Edgar lying down?” a rumbly voice asked.

“I’m suffering, Benjamin,” Poe said, and raised a feeble hand to his brow. His head was in Finn’s lap and his calves lay over Rose’s legs. The rest of him was supported by the bench at their lunch table. He was a perfect picture of misery.

“Poe, sit up and have lunch with us,” Rey said, and set her tray on the table. “Whatever’s going on, it won’t help if you’re hungry.”

Rey loved people by feeding them. Poe loved people with words, which is why he sat up and said, “I need everyone at this table to know, you are my brightest solace in a dark academic eclipse. Except you, Ben.”

“Right.”

“Last year you significantly contributed to the eclipse, actually.”

Ben ducked his head. “Yeah.”

“Partially by just blocking out the sun with your triceps.”

“You do have good triceps, babe,” Rey said, and Ben’s entire face went open and soft, like no one had ever said anything nice about his body before. Poe was going to have some sort of feeling about that as soon as he could emerge from the black hole of despair English had spun around him.

“Lots of astronomical metaphors today,” Finn said. 

“Space is awesome,” Poe informed him, and stole one of his cold fries. He was allowed, because Finn only liked fries when they were hot, whereas Poe maintained that a potato was a perfect food regardless of its temperature.

“But you wouldn’t eat them raw,” Ben said. There was a note of what Poe would definitely have to call challenge in his voice.

“Nooo,” Rose said, as Finn went very still and Rey covered her face with her hands. “Poe, do not eat a raw potato.”

“I bet I can eat a raw potato faster than you can, dark lord,” Poe said.

“This is going to be a totally dumb waste of our energy,” Finn predicted.

“Is he serious?” Ben asked.

“Completely,” Rey said, dropping her hands. “Do it, babe. I bet you can beat him.”

“ _Traitor_ ,” Poe said, outraged.

“Rey, noooo,” Rose moaned.

“What does the winner get?” Ben asked. His mouth was smirking, but there was a glint of genuine competition in his eyes.

“The winner gets the glory!” Poe said. “We can’t besmirch a noble competition with tawdry _prizes_.”

“The winner picks a day the loser has to come to school shirtless until a teacher tells them to cover up,” Finn said. 

“Sure,” Ben said.

“Finn, since you can see me shirtless any time you like, I am taking that as a vote of confidence in my inevitable victory,” Poe said.

“That’s a good forfeit,” Rey said. “Actually, it would be interesting to see how far you got, because a girl wouldn’t make it past the gates. The dress code is ludicrous.”

“ _This_ is ludicrous,” Rose said. “You’re all ludicrous. I can’t believe I saw you three together last year and thought, oh, yes, these ridiculous humans right there, that’s who I want to hang with at my new school.”

Poe draped his arm over her neck and kissed her cheek. “We love you, Rose. We need you. You have to be the judge, because Finn is on Team Awesome Sparkle Winner, and Rey is on Team 90s Goth Loser. We need someone impartial.”

“Your butt is impartial,” Rose muttered, but she was blushing slightly, and Poe knew she’d do it.

Ben was looking at them in some sort of way. Poe might have called it judgy, before, but maybe it was just thoughtful. And a bit sad.

“I bet _Armitage_ would never eat a raw potato,” Poe said to that look.

“No,” Ben said, deadpan. “He’s on the Jordan Peterson diet.”

“Benzos?”

“Beef,” Ben said. “And sparkling water. And an occasional benzo.”

“No wonder he looks so pasty,” Poe said, and then squinted suspiciously at Ben’s fair skin.

Rey wrapped her arms protectively around Ben’s head. “Leave him alone, he burns easily.”

“You cannot protect his enormous face from UV rays with your miniscule body,” Poe said. “Rey, I’m sorry, but that’s against the laws of physics.”

The bell rang, and Poe stuffed a handful of fries in his mouth as everyone stood. “Potatoes. Here. Tomorrow. Dawn. By which I mean lunch.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ben said.

He’d had a much better sense of _drama_ as a fascist, Poe thought, and was briefly horrified until he realised that had apparently not come out of his mouth. He’d been saying a lot of inside thoughts on the outside lately.

“You really have,” Finn said, and ruffled his hair. “It’s the start of school, though. Lots of distractions.”

“Maybe I need to find better uses for my mouth,” Poe said, leering.

“You two are not skipping on the first day,” Rose said, very firmly. Poe _loved_ it when Rose got firm, so he went to class.

The next day, Ben ate a raw potato in four bites while Poe was struggling to swallow his first mouthful. 

“You’re amazing, babe!” Rey shouted, and climbed Ben like a tree to plant hundreds of tiny, adorable, disgusting kisses all over his humongous face.

“This is impossible,” Poe said, through a mouthful of raw potato bits. “This is… _how_ is this.”

Finn clasped his shoulder now. “I’m sorry, buddy,” he said. “But Ben is my boyfriend now. Those are the rules.”

“The rules are I take off my shirt! Finn! The rules are the shirt!”

Ben dropped Rey on her feet and ran for the nearest trash can, where he hurled magnificently for nearly a minute.

“I’m having second thoughts,” Finn said. “I love you. Take me back.”

“We’re broken up forever,” Poe informed him, and swaggered to the nearest bathroom so that no one could watch his frantic spitting and gargling. Raw potatoes were _not good_.

The second bad thing about Ben Solo - which Poe had not known until Rey had brought him to them like a big, sad, Rottweiler puppy - was that he never took a bet he wasn’t sure he could win. As the semester went on, he beat Finn for number of push-ups in a minute, and Rey in a standing-on-one-leg contest that lasted past the lunch period and into fifth, and got them all marked tardy. But he refused to challenge Rose for Slurpee champion (she was a biological marvel who had never gotten brainfreeze in her life) and wouldn’t attempt reciting more lines of _Macbeth_ than Poe. 

“The point of bets is not knowing who’s better!” Poe said. “That’s why you do them, to find out!”

Ben eyed him. “That’s bizarre, Edgar. The point of bets is winning them.” Then, because he was a blight and a torment, he told Poe to come to school without his shirt the next day.

“I haven’t prepared,” Poe wailed. “I haven’t done a single sit-up."

“You look great,” Finn said, which was very nice of him, but also not all that helpful, because Finn did calisthenics for _fun_ , and Poe could only handle exercise when it came in other guises, like being set to music and involving performance.

Rose’s lips were pursed. “Do we need to talk body-positivity again, Poe?” 

“No,” Poe said sulkily. “I’m aware that every body is beautiful. It’s just hard when it’s mine.”

“That's what he said,” Rey said, and Poe had to chase her around the lunch table a few times until she jumped right over it and into the arms of her boyfriend, who didn’t even stagger as he caught her.

“Do you have superpowers?” Poe asked, once he got his breath back. “I direct that question to both of you.”

“Our bond makes us powerful,” Rey informed him, her eyes wide and innocent in the way they went when she was ready for some serious shit-talking. “Also. I bet Ben can beat you at _Starkillers_.”

“What,” Poe said. “No, he can’t.”

“He definitely can’t,” Finn said, so fast that if Poe weren’t already head over heels for him, that would have done it. “Poe has _dreams_ about that game.”

“Uh,” Ben said, and put Rey down. “I mean. I’m pretty good.”

“Not as good as Poe,” Rose said.

“I don’t know if you guys get to decide our bets for us,” Ben said, and he had the vaguely hunted look that Poe recalled seeing at the end of junior year. 

“Yes, he’s right,” Poe said quickly, and ignoring the surprised look Rose threw at him, he turned to Ben. “But do _you_ want to bet you can beat me at _Starkillers,_ Benjamin?”

Ben paused, which was smart, because Poe was very, very good at _Starkillers_. He was numbers 4-6 and 9 on the arcade leaderboard, and the only person ahead of him was the mysterious AMH, who had taken out 1-3, and who he’d never managed to catch playing. 

“What do I get if I win, Edgar?” Ben asked, his voice heavy with doubt.

It was going to have to be good. Ben didn't take on bets he wasn't sure he could win, but maybe he would if the reward was big enough. Poe grinned. “If you win, I’ll call you Ben, Benjamin! And when I win, you’ll call me Poe.”

Ben's eyes sparked. "Done."

"Done!"

"Don't forget about the no shirt tomorrow," Ben added.

Poe got barely ten steps inside the grounds before Mr Ackbar caught him, but the way the vice-principal’s eyes bugged out was totally worth it.


	3. Chapter 3

After Poe’s detention for flagrant part-nudity, they all piled into Rose’s junker and went to Jade Arcade, which was, next to Finn’s bed, Poe’s favourite place in the entire world. 

“Huh,” Ben said as they entered. “Retro.”

“You’ve never been here?” Poe asked. “Oh God, Benjamin, don’t tell me you’ve only played _Starkillers_ on the PC. I want to beat you, not humiliate you beyond the living with it.”

“Uh, no,” Ben said. “My uncle Lando has a lot of old arcade games.”

“Lando _Calrissian_?”

“Yes?”

“Of Calrissian’s City In The Clouds, in Las Vegas?”

“How do you even know about that?” Ben demanded.

“I watched _Tiger King_!”

“He’s in that thing?” Ben said, clearly panicking.

“Rey, why haven’t you made your boyfriend watch _Tiger King_?”

“He’s very sensitive,” Rey said, petting Ben’s arm. “He can’t stand animal cruelty.”

Poe could have said a number of very true things about Ben’s capability for _human_ cruelty, and for a moment he thought about it. But Ben really did seem to have made himself better, and Rey really did seem to love him, and Poe really was a sucker for a redemption arc. “Lando’s not in it for long,” he said instead. “Just a brief cameo. But he’s, uh. Memorable.”

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” Ben muttered. Then he squared his massive shoulders. “Are we gonna play, or what?”

_Starkillers_ was a game that worked on attrition. There wasn’t any way to actually win it. You just kept flying your spaceship through asteroid fields and narrow gorges and forests of gigantic trees. Every now and then, a monster would snap at you, or an enemy ship would sit on your tail until you steered it into a canyon wall. Eventually, you’d make a mistake, and an asteroid would hit you, or an enemy laser would blow you up, and that was game over. No second chances, no spare lives. It had never been a very popular game, but the owner kept it around anyway, possibly just to mess with people.

Every time Poe played, his world narrowed to him and the controls and his ship. Sometimes, he could almost imagine he _was_ a pilot, a gallant adventurer on an impossible mission. He was doomed to fail, but he was leading his enemies away from people he loved. He was throwing himself into a bold and brilliant sacrifice, so that others could live.

This time, he couldn’t really enter the fantasy. He was too aware of Ben watching him, of Finn hanging around behind them. Rey and Rose played air hockey, trading high fives whenever they scored on each other, but after a while, they watched too.

Poe never looked at the score while he played, but when the canyon walls finally caught his wing and his ship spiralled into pixelated oblivion, he could tell from the strain in his shoulders and the ache in his eyes that he'd been playing for a while. 

" _Nice_ ," Finn said as the leaderboard came up. 

Poe had secured fifth place. Not his best effort, but that forced ANT, formerly in tenth, off the board altogether, and gave POE five out of ten places in the high score hall of fame. He was feeling rightfully smug as he stepped back and ceded the controls to Ben.

"We close in half an hour," the arcade owner called from the counter.

Poe gave her his most winning smile. "It's a matter of honour, Mara!"

Mara grunted at him and ostentatiously rearranged the stuffed animals on the prize shelf. She was kind of a terrible employer. She didn't underpay him or refuse rest breaks, but she had impressively awful people skills and no patience for idiots. Poe was pretty sure he'd been her only summer worker to ever last the whole season, and he'd been very impressed with himself when she'd asked him to stay on for Saturdays during the school year.

It didn't take long for Poe to realise he was in trouble. Ben played with absolute focus, his mouth twitching and eyebrows lifting as if he was totally unaware of where he was and that people were watching him. Several times, Poe could have sworn he moved his ship out of the way before asteroids even appeared. He couldn't have memorised the asteroid storms, because randomisation was something _Starkillers_ did really well, so he must have had just superhuman reflexes.

There weren't a few near misses, but Ben sailed past Poe's score, and, just to add insult to injury, went another dozen levels before a cave roof collapsed on his ship.

"No," Poe said, staring at the blinking cursor beside 4TH.

"B-E-N," Ben said, guiding the joystick to the right letters. "Say it, Edgar."

"You win," Poe said through gritted teeth. "Ben."

Ben grinned at him, and then ducked his head. "You are good, though."

"Thanks," Poe said, trying very hard not to sound like a poor loser.

Ben frowned at the screen. "Who's AMH?"

"It's a _mystery_ ," Poe said, cheering up a bit. At least Ben hadn't taken out any of the top spots.

"These scores are literally impossible."

"I _know_! I've never seen them play, and Mara won't even tell me what they look like. My guess is this person is an actual wizard. Mara! Is AMH a literal wizard?"

"Get out of my damn arcade," Mara said. She was holding the door open for them, keys jangling pointedly. “Poe, can you pick up a shift on Thursday evening?”

Poe had Robot Club on Thursdays, but he needed the money. “Sure thing."

“Thanks, kid," Mara said, and then swatted at his head as he made open-mouthed faces at the courtesy.

“Your boss is scary, Edgar,” Ben said, as they walked out into the evening. 

“I know! Isn’t she great?” 

“I love her,” Rey said solemnly, and Ben gave her a look of some apprehension.

A bus emblazoned with “VOTE SNOKE: KEEP CORUSCANT STRONG!” trundled past. Poe scowled at the poster’s wrinkled face and toothy grin. “This fucking guy.”

“Cheer up,” Finn said. “At least you can vote this year. My birthday’s December.”

Ben was standing very stiffly. His arms folded, and his head was bowed, as if he were bracing for a blow. He was staring after the bus.

“I’m voting for your mom, of course,” Poe said.

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.” His voice was flat. Rey put her hand on his back, and he shuddered all over, like a dreamer waking from dark visions. He looked at Poe, and attempted a smile. “She’ll be a good mayor if she wins."

"Of course she'll win," Poe said.

"Of course," Ben echoed. His generous mouth had tucked itself into a thin line, and he didn’t talk very much as Rose dropped everyone to their various homes.

In English, Ms Holdo was making them read short stories and extracts. Poe liked short stories when he could read an anthology or two by the same author and then their biographies, or maybe an essay collection, but he absolutely hated shuffling from one author to the next and filling out compare and contrast charts in group discussion.

Ms Holdo was a stern and unyielding taskmaster who never let them choose their own groups, but she was pretty smart, Poe guessed, because she also never put him in a group with Hux or Phasma. This didn't stop them whispering and smirking at him, or him from giving Hux the finger behind her back, but it did prevent outright violence.

This time, Poe was working with the new kid, Mike. Mike had truly fantastic hair and had already read all the Morrison extracts they'd discussed and had laughed at some of Poe's jokes about capitalism. Poe thought it highly likely that Mike was cool.

"Okay," Mike said. "In this story, Salinger is kind of practicing for _Catcher in the Rye_ , right? But some of the details are different - Holden was never in the army in _Catcher_ , but here he's gone AWOL. What do we think that means?"

"I don't actually know," Poe admitted, with a quick glance at Ms Holdo. "I didn't finish the book."

"Oh. How come?"

"Salinger bores the crap out of me. I mean, I get it, depression is serious and all, but the whining of privileged white teenagers convinced that the whole world is out to get them when actually it's just begging to hand them everything on a silver plate? No, thank you." He jerked his thumb at the corner where Hux was holding forth on Salinger's genius. "I get enough of that in real life."

Mike snickered. Mike was _definitely_ cool.

"Something really stinks," Hux said loudly. "Is it Mexican food? Is someone eating _Mexican_ food in class? I hate the smell of Mexican."

Poe was Guatemalan, but, true to form, Hux had never bothered to make the distinction.

"I think that's the stench of white supremacy," Mike said. Poe thought it was meant to be quiet, but the whole class had just hushed in the face of Hux's utter bullshit, and Mike’s voice was clearly audible.

The room got even quieter.

Hux stood up, his face reddening to match his hair. "Excuse me, are you talking to me? I am just stating a _preference._ I am allowed to have an _opinion,_ because this is a _democracy."_

“Sit down, Mr Hux, and tell us your opinion on Salinger's use of the first person compared to Toni Morrison’s," Ms Holdo said, with disturbing calm.

Hux wobbled for an instant, and saw something in Ms Holdo’s face he didn’t want to fuck with. He sat down. "He's _better_ at it.”

"Why is that your judgement?" Ms Holdo asked, and went on to wield the Socratic method like a rapier until Hux was backed into a corner and had to admit he'd only skimmed the Morrison, because she was _confusing._

" You might get more out of the reading assignments if you actually did them, Mr Hux," Holdo said, and then the bell rang.

Poe offered Mike a fist, which was solemnly bumped. Poe would have also liked to have fist bumped Ms Holdo, but that would have been too weird. Instead he smiled at her on his way out, and got a raised eyebrow in return.

"Where do you have lunch?" he asked Mike. "Do you want to hang with my group?"

"Who's that?"

"Me, and my boyfriend, and his girlfriend, and our amazing friend Rey and her boyfriend."

"Oh. Yeah. That sounds great." 

Ben and Rey weren't actually there, so Poe introduced Rose and Finn. "And this is Mike," he concluded. 

"Um. Actually, it's Jannah. I use she/her pronouns. Jan for short." Jan's face was carefully neutral, but Poe could see her bracing for trouble.

"Move your butt, Finn, so Jan can sit," Rose said. "Ben and Rey are bringing fries."

"Cooked," Finn added, and snickered when Poe tried to swat him, so then they had to explain the raw potato incident to Jan, and Poe completely forgot about Ben's fucking name thing until he and Rey turned up with three plates of fries. 

It wasn't much consolation to realise that Rose and Finn had also forgotten, judging from the sudden tension and quiet inhale, because Poe was responsible for bringing Jan here. If Ben deadnamed her, then Rey or not, redemption arc or not, Poe was going to have some serious words with Mr Tall, Dark and Gloomy.

"Oh, hi," Ben said, and put the tray down. "You're in my physics class. Michael, right?"

"Jannah. Jan for short."

Ben nodded. "Jannah," he said, and fed Rey a fry.

Poe felt every muscle in his shoulders unwind. "Do you like robots, Jan? Robot club is awesome."

"Uh, I like mechanical stuff," Jannah said, and two minutes later, she was engaged in a passionate discussion of fanbelt something and exhaust something else with Rose, who did all the upkeep on her finicky junk pile.

"I'm transferring into Dance," Ben told Poe abruptly.

Poe was seeing how many fries he could hold in his mouth at once, so it took him a moment to process the statement. When he did, he narrowly avoided inhaling fried potato by spitting the mouthful onto the tray. "What. Why?"

"Gross, Poe," Rey said.

"Rey, you cannot lecture me on table manners because you eat everything with your fingers and it's only cute because you're adorable. Ben, what do you mean, you're transferring into Dance?" 

"Out of P.E.," Ben said. His tone was flat.

Poe made what he thought were some educated guesses as to who else was in Ben's P.E. class and frowned. After all his English-related whining, he could hardly give Ben crap for wanting to get away from his former allies. “Do you want me to help you catch up?”

Ben blinked at him. “Catch up?”

“Oh, Ben,” Poe said. “Oh no. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people that thinks Dance is the _easy_ option.”

“I mean,” Ben said, and then wrinkled his nose. “I’m sure it’s demanding. I’m just. I mean. I’m already pretty athletic. And flexible. I do martial arts.”

Poe had to put his head down on the table and make sad noises while Finn patted his back. It would be beyond unfair if Ben turned out to be a natural dancer as well as a _Starkillers_ champion who could _actually fly a plane_ , but knowing Poe’s luck, that was exactly what was about to happen.


	4. Chapter 4

Ben Solo could not dance.

He could do all the _moves_ , and he picked up routines very quickly, but he had absolutely no sense of performance. He _plodded_ through dances, every motion technically fine and completely uninspired, and his facial expression was frozen halfway between frowning concentration and deep befuddlement. He had no sense of narrative and absolutely no character. He could have been a well-programmed robot, except the robot Poe was building actually had more personality than Ben trying to dance.

They’d just started a choreography unit when Ben transferred. Poe had been planning a solo performance, but he had heroically volunteered to do a duo with Ben. He had _volunteered_ . He had put _himself_ in this position.

“You’re an Adam metaphor!” he told Ben. “You open the box, you look surprised, appalled, and guiltily intrigued, and then you thrust it at me, but in an unconvincing way.”

“I think you mean Pandora.”

“What?”

“Pandora had the box, Edgar.”

“It’s a _metaphor_ , Ben! Let’s do it from the top.”

Ben took the box, opened the lid, waited three beats, and gave it back to Poe. His face maintained the same expression of grim determination throughout.

“Oh my god,” Poe said. “Can’t you even pretend to be having fun?”

“I’m not good at pretending,” Ben said heavily.

“All right. Well. You’re sure P.E. is a no-go?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. It was impossible for him to look even more grim, but he did it anyway.

“Okay,” Poe said, and sat cross-legged on the dance room floor. The floor was marinated with the sweat of hundreds, but since Poe was pretty sweaty himself, he didn’t mind. “Okay. Do you mind if I ask some personal questions?”

Ben gave him a weird look. “Since when do you need permission for that?”

Poe decided this meant _go ahead, Poe, delve into my darkest secrets._ “Is failing Dance going to fuck up your GPA and or college prospects?”

Ben grimaced, and sat down beside him, giant knees bent up. “Maybe. For the kind of college Mom wants me to go to.”

“Do _you_ want to go to that kind of college?”

“Maybe. Han thinks I should get a job and think about it.”

“Han is?”

“My dad,” Ben said, giving Poe another look. “Han Solo.”

“The pilot dad, right.” Poe stopped, his mouth falling open slightly. “Ben. Does your dad want you to get a job with _him_ ? Are you going to be a gap year _pilot_ ?”

Ben ducked his head.

“Your world is just overflowing with options! Ben! This is amazing!”

“I don’t know,” Ben said. “Maybe I’ll do something else. I don’t know what.” He was hunched up, his long arms wrapped completely around his knees. “Can we just practise the dance again?”

Being a college student or a pilot were the two things Poe wanted more than anything in the world, and it seemed totally outrageous that Ben was being offered _both_ when Poe wasn’t sure he could have either. Ben Solo was definitely privileged beyond Poe’s wildest dreams, his whiteness and his money and his family all combining to give him so many advantages he probably never even thought about, and it was all ludicrously unfair. 

Poe would have pointed out some of this, except Ben had tied himself into a human knot and wouldn’t meet Poe’s eyes. His aura of misery was almost tangible.

“All right,” Poe said, and popped to his feet. He reached down to give Ben a hand up.

It was an automatic gesture - he’d do the same for Finn or Rose or Rey - but when Ben put his large, cold hand in Poe’s, Poe realised that, minus a few shoving matches last year, it was the first time they’d ever touched. Taken aback, he pulled a little harder than he’d meant to, and Ben came easily off the floor, taking a couple of steps towards Poe to get his balance.

Ben was so tall! Much too tall!

“All right,” Poe said again, _very fast_ , while Ben blinked at him with long, black eyelashes. “We’ll do the routine again, and you should ask Ms Tano if you can take Dance pass/fail, because I think I can get you over that line, but maybe not a _lot_ over it. This is not an insult! But you are just not good, face-wise.”

Ben smiled. “That sounds like an insult, Edgar.”

“That’s why I said it wasn’t beforehand,” Poe said, very logically. 

Later, in the warmth of Finn’s bed, he said, “Do you think Ben is happy?”

Finn pulled him a little closer, his arm tightening. “You can’t make everyone happy, Poe.”

“So that’s a no?”

“I think he’s conditionally happy,” Finn said. “When he’s with Rey. When he was playing _Starkillers_ . I don’t think he’s happy with himself.”

“Well, that sucks.”

Finn raised up on one elbow and looked down at him. “Three months ago, you wouldn’t have given a shit about Ben Solo’s happiness.”

“Three months ago, I would have actively sabotaged it,” Poe agreed cheerfully. “Things change.” 

“And how,” Finn said, his mouth curving. He kissed Poe’s cheek, and then his mouth, and then his throat, and things got athletic shortly after that.

The next day was Saturday, which meant Poe had to summon all his considerable strength of character to leave a naked Finn drowsing in his bed, climb out Finn’s bedroom window, and catch the bus to the Jade Arcade. The bus was Snoke-emblazoned, and Poe would have avoided boarding it out of principle, except Mara was paying him to be on time and he couldn’t let her down; also, she might fire him.

This was the snare of capitalism; you had to compromise your principles if you wanted to get paid. Poe's parents said that compromise was what adults did, all the time, and that sounded horrible, and also completely impossible. Poe suspected he was going to be pretty bad at being an adult.

There were posters of Snoke inside the bus too. Poe sat down by one and kept his eyes on the driver as he carefully wrote "F A C I S" in black Sharpie all across Snoke's terrible toothy smile. His stop came up before he was finished, so he had to scribble the T in a hurry but it was probably the thought that counted.

Mara threw the store keys at his head as soon as he came through the door. It was a good thing he'd honed his reflexes through hours of _Starkillers._

"What's up?" he said, putting the keys in his jeans pocket.

"I got a call. I have to go to the fucking bank."

"Banks are evil."

Mara rolled her eyes. She was already putting on her jacket, a worn black leather thing that was impossibly badass. Poe coveted that jacket _so hard_ . "Don't set anything on fire," she said, and walked out.

Poe definitely loved his parents, but he also wished Mara would adopt him and be his cool, angry aunt.

There weren't many people in the arcade at that hour. Quarters Joe was playing his maze game, which, he'd once confided to Poe, was his gambling addiction therapy, and Sara Lee was taking another run at _Jupiter Sky_ . Poe restocked the prize shelves and dusted some screens, mostly so that he could be moving.

The first family turned up at just past eleven, and the day exploded from there. Poe exchanged tokens for prizes, adjusted the music, kicked out two teenagers who were making out in the ballpit, mediated four separate sibling arguments, and, in desperation, did a hard reset on a frozen game that would not respond to anything gentler. This reset the leaderboard, which meant the game was promptly swarmed by kids eager to get their initials on it.

Worse, they texted their friends.

Mara didn't come and didn't come and didn't come. 

Ben Solo, though, arrived in the middle of the afternoon rush.

"Where's Rey?" Poe demanded.

Ben blinked at him. "Studying with Rose," he said, and tried to walk past Poe. This didn’t work, because he was enormous, the aisles were narrow, and Poe was blocking the passage with his arms outstretched.

“Help me!” Poe said. “Ben. Ben, I am dying of hunger. My blood sugar is like… what’s a thing that’s not sweet?”

“This conversation.”

“Like a lemon. My blood sugar is like a lemon.”

“That’s a terrible simile.”

“I _know_ . That is what hunger _does_ to me, Ben! Ben, I need to get a sandwich, or I will eat one of these children. Can you watch the arcade for ten minutes?”

“Uh,” Ben said. His eyes darted around the room, full of beeps and whistles and small, energetic bodies.

“Five! Five minutes!”

“Just… Stay here,” Ben said, and hurried back out the arcade door.

Poe wanted very badly to yell that staying here was the problem, but the little girl playing _Nightmare Killer Five_ wanted more tokens, and yelling in front of customers was a bad look.

In seven minutes, Ben reappeared at the counter with a strained look and a burrito.

“Thank you sweet Jesus,” Poe said, and tore the foil off the end.

“I know you said a sandwich but-”

“This is great,” Poe said, through a mouthful of beans and cheese.

Ben was still looking strained. “I just… I didn’t buy it because you’re. You know.”

Poe swallowed the bite and licked sour cream off his lips. “One, I’m Guatemalan, not Mexican. Two, I appreciate your attempt to not stereotype. Three, burritos are a staple American food group regardless of one’s ethnic heritage. Four, what do I owe you?"

Ben looked, if possible, even more uncomfortable. "Nothing."

Poe blinked at him. "Dude. I can pay for a burrito." He gestured at the arcade. "That's kind of the point of all this."

"You owe me _nothing_ ," Ben said, suddenly intense, and Poe really wanted to delve into that, except that was the moment _Singtacular_ crashed and he had to go save the console from a furious tween who'd been about to beat her brother.

Ben had vanished by the time Poe could get back to the counter and his cold-but-still-good burrito, which raised the question of why he'd come to the arcade at all. Poe had assumed it was for _Starkillers._ Maybe Poe's appalling and unforgivable behaviour in requesting the price of a meal Ben had purchased for him had driven Ben away. 

Poe would have worried about it, but he was too busy holding a small business together single-handed.

Mara came back just before eight, right when Poe was seriously considering locking the doors and leaving a note that said "I quit". 

"I'm sorry, kid," she said. She looked terrible - exhausted and kind of dusty, like all the colour had drained out of her. Poe didn't usually think of Mara as old, even though she was at least sixty, but she looked old now.

"It's okay," he said, instead of any of the speeches he'd composed in his head.

"Nope," she said and surveyed the arcade. The families had all gone home, but there were several regulars still around. "We're closing," she said, loudly enough to break through the beeps and midi music, but still with that disturbing lack of energy.

Mara's regulars were used to her, so they all left without much grumbling. Mara locked the door behind them, and Poe went out back to get the vacuum cleaner. Mara shook her head when she saw him dragging it in. "I'll deal with that later," she said.

Poe wasn't sure where to put his hands. He stuck them in his pockets and bounced on his toes a bit. Asking wasn't going to do anything - Mara would either tell him or she wouldn't. He'd just have to be patient.

"What happened?" he blurted.

If Poe had to be honest, he would admit that patience had never been his best quality.


	5. Chapter 5

For a moment, Poe thought Mara was going to ignore him. 

Then she rolled her shoulders. "City's rezoning," she said flatly. "Bank heard it from the mayor's office yesterday." She made an impatient gesture. "Makes a difference to the arcade's mortgage."

"How come?"

"I didn't get the best deal," Mara said. "Bank wasn't sure I was a good risk. So there are some clauses in the contract…" She shook her head. "The detail isn't important. But basically, I spent most of the day arguing them down to something I could maybe manage if I cashed every favour I had. Then I spent the evening cashing those favours."

"Holy shit."

Mara pinned him with a look. "This isn't for general conversation. I'm only telling you because you had to carry the can today, and you deserve to know why."

"I won't tell anyone," Poe said. "Um. Am I fired?"

"Fuck, no. I can't run this place on weekends alone."

Poe let out the breath he'd been holding. 

"But probably no more Thursday evenings," Mara added. "And I was going to give you a raise, but now… it's okay if you want to find another job, kid. I'll give you a good reference."

"I'll stay," Poe said. 

It probably wasn't very practical. But even though Mara was an employer and therefore automatically exploiting him through the mechanisms of late-stage capitalism, he liked her. She never told him to stop fidgeting, and she got that sometimes there were problems he had to focus on until they were fixed, even if there was other stuff going on that people might think was more important. The day he’d taken apart the cash register to find the reason it stuck sometimes, anyone else would have fired him. Mara had made change out of an open drawer for most of the day, and said, “Good job, kid,” when he put it back together.

And the drawer hadn’t stuck since.

“Okay,” Mara said. “Okay.”

For a second, Poe thought Mara was going to - well, not _hug_ him, but maybe, like, clap him on the shoulder or shake his hand. But someone banged on the door, destroying the moment, and Poe hated that person.

“We’re closed,” Mara yelled.

“Let me in, Jade,” the person said. It was a woman’s voice. Loud, but not shouting. Clear and calm, and absolutely authoritative.

Poe had never met her, but he recognised that voice. He was moving before he thought about it, taking the keys from Mara’s unresisting hand and opening the door to Councilwoman Leia Organa.

She was a lot shorter than he’d thought -- much, much shorter than her son -- and the look of wary bafflement that sometimes marked Ben’s face was a sort of wry observation in hers. Ben’s expression said _this is weird, and I don’t like it_. Leia’s face said _I see what’s going on here, and I’m going to fix it_.

She swept past Poe, giving him a nod of acknowledgement, and walked into the arcade, stopping a few feet in front of Mara. The women regarded each other. Poe was reasonably certain that anyone walking through the space between them would be instantly struck dead by the electricity of their tension.

“He rezoned,” Mara said flatly.

“I know.”

Mara’s eyebrow lifted. “The bank said the news came from the mayor’s office.”

“Mm,” Leia said. “I imagine he wanted to do one of his grand announcements on Monday. He does so like theatre of the press.”

“So someone leaked it early?” Mara folded her arms. “Gave me a chance on a headstart.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Leia said smoothly. “Although, when I’m mayor, I will certainly focus on the health of local businesses above the agendas of international industrial interests.”

“What do you want, Organa?”

“Right now?” Leia sighed. Her shoulders relaxed, and she looked suddenly small and vulnerable. Poe didn’t trust it for a second. “Right now, I want to know where my son is.”

“Ben?” Poe blurted.

Leia Organa looked at Poe. Poe had been looked at by some real experts, including Ms Holdo, Ms Kanata, and Vice-Principal Akbar, but Councilwoman Organa was the best looker-at Poe had ever encountered. "You must be Edgar," she said.

"Poe. Yes. Wait! Ben's _talked_ about me?"

"At length," Leia said. She was smiling -- not the polite smile she'd given him when she came in, but a smile as if she was amused by some private joke. "Have you seen him?"

"He bought me a burrito at lunchtime. Is he - what's going on?"

"We had an argument," Leia said. The smile vanished. "He left. He said he was coming here. But he hasn't come home, and he won't answer his phone."

“Umm,” Poe said, mind working furiously. “I don’t know where he is now.”

Leia Organa’s eyes bored into his. “Can you find out?” 

Poe didn’t actually have Ben’s number. But he had Rey’s, and the group chat. “Maybe,” he hedged.

“Stop pressuring my staff, Organa,” Mara said, shoulders squaring.

“You don’t need to tell me where he is,” Leia pressed. “I just want to know that he’s all right. That I don’t need to check police stations. Or hospitals.”

There was something in the way she said it, as if this would be an awful but not unfamiliar task. Poe swallowed hard. Rey had said things had been bad for Ben, both before he joined Hux’s cult and when he’d cut ties, but she wouldn’t give details, and Ben never talked about it. He just moved out of PE and tied himself into knots on the Dance practice hall floor and left the arcade when it was clear Poe was too busy to talk to him.

“Okay, wait a second,” Poe said, and opened the group chat.

Finn responded first, but he hadn’t seen Ben. Neither had Jan. Rose hadn’t either, but Rey had left their study date early when Ben texted her.

Rey’s response was three dots for a while, as if she was thinking hard about what to say or writing a long message. In the end, she just wrote, “He’s with me. We’re okay. He says, tell Leia he’ll be home soon.”

Poe passed that on.

Leia let out a long breath, and this time, Poe thought the glimpse of a tired woman might have been genuine. Then she levelled a smile at him that had all the softness of a steel beam, and he felt his spine creak into parade rest. “I take it I can trust to your discretion?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Poe said.

“Good,” Leia said, and flicked half a glance to Mara, who rolled her eyes and shrugged. Leia, apparently satisfied, looked back at Poe. “Thank you. Ben’s fortunate to have friends like you.”

Poe had only reluctantly come to realisation that he and Ben were _friends_ about five seconds ago, so he mumbled something incoherent and watched as Leia Organa regally swept out of the arcade.

“You know Leia Organa,” he said out loud.

Mara snorted. “Yeah.”

“How?”

“I dated her brother for a while,” Mara admitted. She frowned at Poe. “Is her kid the one who beat you at _Starkillers_?”

“One time!” Poe said. “One time. I’ll get him in a rematch.”

“Uh-huh,” Mara said sceptically. “Let me tell you, kid, Skywalkers don’t lose easy.”

“Skywalkers?”

“Organas. Whatever.”

“Ben’s a Solo,” Poe said, and for a brief moment had some sympathy for Ben’s I-will-only-use-your-real-name-no-nicknames-allowed stance. If everybody in your family had a different surname, maybe you’d just want the one.

“My point is, they’re all stubborn as rocks, and dramatic as teenage theatre kids.”

“Hey,” Poe objected. “ _I’m_ stubborn and dramatic.”

Mara shook her head. “Not like they are, kid. Not even close.”

  
  


Rey didn’t say anything else about Ben’s disappearance on the group chat, and Poe spent the rest of the weekend doing homework, babysitting his siblings (a task he was _singularly_ unsuited to, not that this ever got him off the hook), and trading increasingly unlikely speculations with Finn and Jan about what had happened to set Ben off. (Finn’s favourite theory was that Ben was a secret werewolf. Poe thought this was extremely unlikely, because Ben was one hundred and twenty percent a cat person.) 

Rose refused to join in, on the grounds that it was mean, and also that they’d probably all find out on Monday anyway.

Poe got his first inkling when he got to his locker, barely five minutes late, and saw the black and white posters in the halls.

“JOIN THE KNIGHTS OF RIGHT”, they said, in Gothic capitals. “CELEBRATING EUROPEAN HERITAGE AND VALUES.” 

“What the fuck,” Poe said, and went looking for Ben.

**Author's Note:**

> Trying for a weekly schedule, but there may be delays.


End file.
